PEDIGREE SEED AND POLLEN.
Pedigree seeds are produced by plants grown from selected seeds through a course of several generations. With wheat, which is wholly self -fertilized before the flowers are open to any influence from foreign pollen (or is supposed or said to be ) this course of selection may result in a great inprovement of the grain. Butwitfcall other crops there is a serious difficulty in securing pure breeding. Pollen from all sorts of plants is carried by the winds for miles. I have seen lakes in Nothern Michigan, and rainwater barrels, and even the grass, coverered with yellow pollen of the pines at the flowering season, which was washed down by a thunder shower, and there were no pines within a dozzen miles. Once I raised a crop of evergreen sweet corn for a seedsman, to be used for seed, and no other corn was grown within half a mile ; yet hundreds of ears were impure from pollen brought by the winds. Hence the so called pedigree corn, oats, barley, peas and other seeds offered by seedsmen are all subject to this risk of impurity; without counting on the temptation to sell common seed as a superior land, offered by .the high prices obtained for it. — Triticum.
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Northern Advocate, 8 October 1887, Page 5
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209PEDIGREE SEED AND POLLEN. Northern Advocate, 8 October 1887, Page 5
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